One extravagance, and only one, did he permit himself—­I am thinking of his private band.  Yet even that he did not deliberately seek.  The idea came to him unexpectedly, put into his head by the Commissioner of Customs at Tientsin, who wrote one day that he had among his subordinates the very man for a bandmaster.  Pathetic derelict, a bandmaster without a band!  Acting upon a sudden inspiration—­perhaps with some subtle intuition of the important part the music was to play in the life of the community in after years, and of all the pleasure it was to give—­the I.G. sent money from his private purse to buy instruments and music, though until that moment the idea of a band in Peking had seemed infinitely remote if not utterly preposterous.

[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT HART’S BAND IN THE EARLY ’NINETIES, BEFORE IT HAD GROWN TO ITS PRESENT SIZE.

Playing on the lawn in front of his house.]

Some dozen promising young Chinese were at once collected and initiated into the complicated mysteries of chords and keys.  They learned quickly and well—­so well that within a year eight of them were ready to come up to the capital and teach others.  A doubtful venture became an assured success.  More and more players were added; a promising barber, lured, perhaps, by the playing of his friend’s flute, abandoned his trade and set to work on the ’cello; or a shoemaker, forsaking his last, devoted himself to the cornet.  The neighbouring tailor laid aside his needle; the carter left his cart, bewitched away from everyday things by the music.  It may be the smart uniform had something to do with the popularity of the organization; there is ever a fine line between art and vanity—­but why dwell upon an ignoble motive?

Suffice it to say, whether from pure conceit or better things, the little company grew till it reached a score, and, under a Portuguese bandmaster, touched a high level of perfection, playing both on brass and strings with taste and spirit.  The Tientsin branch flourished equally well and became ultimately the Viceroy’s band, and the mother of bands innumerable all over the metropolitan province of Chihli.  But in reputation it never equalled what was known throughout China as the “I.G.’s Own.”

[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT HART’S CHINESE BAND.]

In spring and autumn his musicians gave an open-air concert in the Inspectorate garden every Wednesday afternoon.  Of course, this was the event of the week so far as society was concerned.  Peking residents, as well as many distinguished strangers who happened to be passing, came to listen.  The scene was invariably animated; ladies walked about under the lilacs, which in April hung over the paths like soft clouds of purple fog, displaying their newest toilettes; diplomats discussed la situation politique; missionaries argued points of doctrine; correspondents exchanged bits of news.  All nationalities, classes and creeds were represented in this cosmopolitan corner of the world, but the lions and the lambs agreed tacitly to tolerate each other for the sake of hearing the familiar tunes, warming as good old wine to the hearts of exiles, and for the sake of seeing the mysterious man whose advice, given, as it were, under his breath, shaped the course of events in China.